"Because I grew up during the twilight of the
Wagnerian
gods and began composing amid the ruins of Debussyism, I
feel
that any imitation of Debussy in our day is nothing but
scavenging."
Thus wrote Georges Auric, calling for a fresh
artistic approach
to music in the first issue of Le Coq,
published early in
1921.

"In the meantime we have had
the circus, the music hall,
travelling theatre parades, and American
orchestras," continued
Auric, one of the famed group known as
'Les Six.' "How can
one forget the Casino de Paris or the little
circus on the Boulevard
Saint-Jacques with its trombones and drums?
It's been an awakening
for us."

The call for new
artistic perspectives that developed in the
twenties wasn't however
limited to musicians. A whole group of
writers, painters, and
intellectuals had already rallied around
poet Jean Cocteau who was a
master at bringing people and ideas
together. Cocteau, a strong
advocate of the avant-garde movement,
had his finger in a lot of pies.
From 1910 on he frequented the
Ballets Russes, and in 1912 worked
with Diaghilev and Nijinsky
in creating the ballet Le Dieu
bleu. He was a passionate
admirer of Stravinsky's work and
defended Le Sacre du Printemps
against its detractors. In
particular, he was a friend of Erik
Satie, whose originality of style
and involvement in musical upheaval
had a profound impact on the
poet's thinking. Even before Les
Six were launched in January 1920 by
Cocteau and music critic
Henri Collet, Satie had heralded the new
trend with compositions
like the ballet Parade in 1917. With
this work, the circus
ceased to be merely an amusement for children
and became an artistic
symbol.

Six young
musicians

Les Six and Le Coq grew out of Parisian
artistic revelry.
Cocteau frequently dined on Saturday evening, with
six young composers,
all recent Conservatory graduates: Darius
Milhaud, Francis Poulenc,
Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey
and Germaine Tailleferre.
They were often joined by pianists Marcelle
Meyer and Juliette
Meerovitch, the Russian singer Koubitsky, and
painters Marie Laurencin,
Irène Lagut and Valentine Gross (not
yet married to Jean
Hugo), as well as writers Lucien Daudet and
Raymond Radiguet.
After dinner the Saturday night revellers went to
the Foire du
Trône or the Médrano Circus to enjoy the
mime shows
of the Fratellini brothers. The evening would end at
Darius Milhaud's
or the Gaya Bar, where they listened to Jean
Wiéner play
"negro music." Cocteau would read his
latest poems while
Milhaud and Auric, joined by Arthur Rubinstein,
played a six-handed
version of Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le toit.
This work, composed
in 1920 and performed on stage with the famous
Fratellini, was
to become the Saturday night party piece. It was such
a hit that
the owner of the renowned Gaya Bar called his new
restaurant on
the Rue Boissy d'Anglas "Le Boeuf sur le
toit." With
the help of Jean Wiéner and Clément
Doucet, the
restaurant became a fashionable meeting-place. The other
signature
pieces of Les Six were Georges Auric's Adieu New
York and
Francis Poulenc's
Cocarde.

Satie the mentor, Cocteau
the spokesman

While his peers revelled in Paris's
nightlife, Satie was living
in poverty in Arcueil. He didn't have
enough money to follow the
group - though he did meet with them on
occasion - and in 1921
organised a lecture on Les Six. He also joined
them when his music
was being performed, programmed with compositions
by Les Six.
But perhaps most notably - he worked with them on the
review Le
Coq - wherein Georges Auric strongly opposed Wagner
and Debussy.

Satie had already composed Les
Gymnopédies, a
set of satirical pieces with a strong
infusion of minimalism.
Too many notes killed the music, it was felt;
the essence had
to be stated with the stroke of a pencil. Cocteau
expressed Satie's
art as a "white" (or cool) freedom coming
after the
flamboyant freedom of Stravinsky. "Satie has invented
a new
simplicity. Its transparency reduces the lines, and pain
isn't
expressed by contortions."1 Fernand Léger was
worth
more than Pissarro and Monet; away with clouds and
reflections
in the water! Art was in the street and the factory, at
the fair
and at work (as demonstrated in the Sonatine
bureaucratique)!
The young musicians (not yet established as Les
Six) invited Satie
to play at their first concert, performing
Parade for four
hands with Juliette Meerovitch. In 1918, prior
to a concert by
the "Nouveaux Jeunes," Satie introduced
each of the
six musicians to the audience, describing their
individual talents.
Unlike his young confrères, Satie was an
ideological extremist
who lived according to his ideas, but was
neither self-satisfied
nor intransigent. Even so, he suffered from
isolation and poverty.
"This beggarly life revolts me," he
wrote in a letter
to Valentine Gross. He simply did not have
Cocteau's ease in Paris
society.

Cocteau wasn't however a
member of the fashionable world, but
rather the archetypal
intellectual of the early twentieth century.
He hated Parisian
society but couldn't do without it. When not
spending time on the
Côte d'Azur fleeing the beau monde,
Cocteau was flitting
brilliantly from one salon to another.

He knew where to find a
patron. Coco Chanel had complete confidence
in him and never hesitated
to pay his bills or create costumes
for his avant-garde ballets such
as Antigone (scored by
Honegger) or Le train bleu
(scored by Milhaud). Cocteau
was also an habitué of Misia
Sert's famous soirées,
described in detail in pianist
Arthur Rubinstein's memoirs. Anna
de Noailles was his muse for many
years, and he was also close
to the Comtesse de Greffuhle and the
Comtesse de Chevigné
(whose combined image inspired Proust's
Duchesse de Guermantes),
as well as the Polignac and Étienne
de Beaumont families.
(To have Proust as a sponsor guaranteed you
notoriety in Parisian
society). Cocteau was, however, very eclectic
in his butterfly
progress, always on the lookout for the exceptional
or the extraordinary
among newcomers who might pique his interest.
These included the
poet Anna de Noailles, whom he raised to the
heights before his
interest cooled, Raymond Radiguet, whom he
launched as a new literary
fashion, and later actor Jean Marais and
writer Jean Genet, to
name a few. One may wonder whether Les Six were
not sacrificed
on the altar of Cocteau's overwhelming
personality.

The group was officially named Les Six on January
16, 1920,
although it had begun to come together in 1918. The group
as such
did not survive long. In 1921 Louis Durey left, despite
pleas
by Milhaud and Cocteau to stay. Durey was tired of Paris and
its
intrigues. He retreated to. St Tropez to seek inspiration in
solitude.
His departure left a gap in the preparation of the group's
banner
composition, Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, but
Germaine
Tailleferre completed Durey's section in time for the piece
to
be performed on June 18, 1921. As time went on the five
remaining
musicians, no longer fresh from the conservatory, faced the
hardships
of a composer's life. Satie noted that instead of the group
Les
Six, there were now six individual musicians. Shortly
afterward,
in 1923, he remarked, "Les Six are Auric, Milhaud and
Poulenc."
In the same year the composer of Parade
inspired another
movement called the Arcueil School. Its members
-Henri Sauguet,
Maxime Jacob, Henri Cliquet-Pleyel and Roger
Desormières
- seemed set to carry on the work of Les Six, but
for lack of
a genuine leader this group was even more short-lived.